- 1 year ago
We've seen this movie before. US President Donald Trump is talking up a ceasefire initiative, only for the killing to continue in Gaza; killing that is relentless and off-the-scales ever since the rollout of a US-Israeli aid delivery scheme that bypasses traditional international agencies.
We ask about Trump's claim that Israel has agreed to his 60-day truce and the reaction of a Hamas that's down but not completely out. We also ask what's changed since Benjamin Netanyahu walked away in March from a phased agreement that was to lead to a permanent ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages. For starters: Israel's 12-day war with Iran, where it was the US president who told Netanyahu to declare victory and go home. Will Trump twist the Israeli leader's arm again when Netanyahu travels to Washington next week? All bets are off: will it be the Trump who gushes about a Gaza Riviera construction scheme that kicks out Palestinians, or the one who forces Netanyahu's hand by announcing Iran negotiations or recognising Syria's government? More broadly, when is enough enough? Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Aurore Laborie, Ilayda Habip and Yann Pusztai.
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
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We ask about Trump's claim that Israel has agreed to his 60-day truce and the reaction of a Hamas that's down but not completely out. We also ask what's changed since Benjamin Netanyahu walked away in March from a phased agreement that was to lead to a permanent ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages. For starters: Israel's 12-day war with Iran, where it was the US president who told Netanyahu to declare victory and go home. Will Trump twist the Israeli leader's arm again when Netanyahu travels to Washington next week? All bets are off: will it be the Trump who gushes about a Gaza Riviera construction scheme that kicks out Palestinians, or the one who forces Netanyahu's hand by announcing Iran negotiations or recognising Syria's government? More broadly, when is enough enough? Produced by François Picard, Rebecca Gnignati, Aurore Laborie, Ilayda Habip and Yann Pusztai.
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
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NewsTranscript
00:00We've seen this movie before, Donald Trump talking up a ceasefire initiative only for the killing to continue in Gaza.
00:08Killing that's been relentless of late, off the scales ever since a U.S. and Israeli aid delivery scheme that bypasses traditional international agencies.
00:19We'll ask about Trump's claim that Israel has agreed to his 60-day truce, the reaction of Hamas that's down but not completely out.
00:28And what's changed since Benjamin Netanyahu walked away in March from a phased agreement that was to lead to a permanent ceasefire in the release of remaining hostages?
00:38What's changed? Well, for starters, Israel's 12-day war with Iran, where it was the U.S. president that told Netanyahu to declare victory and go home.
00:47Will Trump twist the Israeli leader's arm again when Netanyahu travels to Washington next week? All bets are off.
00:54Will it be the Donald Trump who gushes about a Gaza Riviera construction scheme or the one who forces Netanyahu's hand by announcing Iran negotiations or the recognition of Syria's government?
01:07More broadly, when is enough enough?
01:10Today in the France 24 debate, how hard will Trump push for that Gaza ceasefire?
01:15With us from Washington, Hussein Ibbish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute.
01:20Thanks for being with us.
01:22Thank you, Ranswa.
01:22Also in the U.S. capital, Negar Mordesavi, journalist, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy.
01:30Thanks for joining us again.
01:33Thanks for having me.
01:35Tel Aviv pollster and political analyst Mitchell Barak is with us.
01:40Thank you for being with us again.
01:44I'm in Jerusalem, though.
01:45In Jerusalem.
01:46Thanks for the correction.
01:50And from the village of Ribovillet in the eastern Alsace region of France, Ronan Collaire, a colonel in Israel's Navy Reserve and one of the founders of the civic aid group Brothers and Sisters in Arms.
02:03Welcome to the show.
02:05Yeah, thank you.
02:06Very happy to be here.
02:07Good evening.
02:08Reminder, you can listen to the France 24 debate wherever podcasts are streamed.
02:15Yeah, it's been sometimes dozens killed per day of late, entire neighborhoods told to evacuate, and a life-threatening embargo.
02:23Dateline, for instance, Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital, where on Tuesday, a shortage of fuel forced the suspension of services inside the dialysis unit.
02:33I need dialysis due to the lack of solar power and water.
02:41The dialysis process is stopped.
02:44Without dialysis, the levels of fluid and toxins in our blood increase.
02:48We suffocate.
02:49We can't sleep.
02:50We lose our appetite.
02:51We can't move.
02:53It's very difficult.
02:57Hussain Yibish, how much coverage is Gaza getting where you are?
03:00Not much, and definitely not enough.
03:05Only when Trump says something, you know, they report, OK, President Trump has said something.
03:09But I think the killing in Gaza, which, as you say, is kind of off the charts, has also become routinized.
03:19In American media, it's a, you know, a dog bites man story.
03:25It's just considered normal somehow.
03:27And that's really tragic because you're talking about an incredible situation where food distribution has been turned, I'm not saying deliberately, but in effect, into a mousetrap where people are lured into food distribution centers and then shot down.
03:44And you've had 600 or so people shot at these food distribution centers, you know, by Israeli forces mainly since late May.
03:56And also, you know, bombing attacks that have wiped out, you know, 40 people here, 25 people there.
04:04It's pretty extraordinary.
04:05So I do think, to a very large extent, the war has just become background noise.
04:12And that's outrageous.
04:13Yeah, you mentioned those food distribution points.
04:17More and more Israeli soldiers have been speaking out.
04:21The military denying Sunday's report in daily newspaper Haaretz, where active duty soldiers describe orders to shoot at unarmed soldiers.
04:32One of them saying it's a killing field.
04:35Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day.
04:39They're treated like a hostile force, no crowd control measures, no tear gas, just live fire with everything imaginable.
04:48Heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars.
04:50Then once the center opens, the shooting stops and they know they can approach.
04:55Our form of communication is gunfire.
04:57Ronan Kuller, have you been able to speak with active duty soldiers of late?
05:04Has there been a tipping point reached?
05:06I think that the tipping point is reached.
05:11I think that what's happening in Gaza is right now going nowhere.
05:18It's going nowhere for the people who live there.
05:23It's going nowhere for the IDF.
05:25You know, there are soldiers being, Israeli soldiers being killed almost every day for, I want to say, for no reason or for no real task.
05:37And it's a terrible tragedy for both sides.
05:39And this war needs to end as soon as possible.
05:42I totally agree.
05:43It's a tragedy and I agree that it's somehow routinized and people are becoming blunt to it.
05:52And it has a huge impact on our own people because many of these reservists have been there for 500 days and they are already in a bad shape themselves.
06:06And adding that is terrible.
06:08And these orders to shoot, can you corroborate that?
06:11I haven't been there.
06:15I don't know if there are orders to shoot.
06:17I think it's a war situation that has nothing to do with real fighting and everybody is stressful.
06:26I don't want to sound as if I'm justifying it.
06:30It's a situation that no one can really deal with.
06:38Not any young soldier or reservist can deal with it.
06:43I don't think that anyone is doing it on purpose, but I definitely think that the situation is terrible.
06:51Mitchell Barak, there have been 20 Israeli soldiers killed in the last month, especially since the ceasefire with Iran.
07:00There are those, particularly last week when there were seven Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza.
07:07There was the sense now it's going to become another Iraq, another Fallujah, where we're bogged down, that it's gone on for too long.
07:18Is that a general feeling?
07:19What do your surveys say?
07:21I don't know if we're bogged down.
07:26I mean, Iraq and Fallujah are thousands of miles away from the United States of America.
07:30What I find amazing about the program so far is we're about five, six minutes into it.
07:35No one has mentioned the people who are in charge of Gaza, who were elected by the people of Gaza.
07:40And that's the Islamic resistance movement, the Hamas, who spent the last 20 years in government and spent most of the money, the aid money and their know-how and their tenacity and try to kill Israelis and to build tunnels.
07:55And, you know, like you said, seven Israelis were killed just last week.
07:59They don't give up.
08:00And the amazing thing is you keep running the loop of pictures of these children and older women getting food.
08:07The pictures that we see here all the time are the Hamas operatives standing with guns on the trucks as soon as they come in.
08:16As soon as they get in, they take over that food, that humanitarian aid.
08:20That's what's holding this up, and that's what the problem is.
08:22And that's where most of the people that are getting shot are, those that are taking the trucks over and stealing all the food.
08:30And you haven't even told the story here.
08:32You show those pictures.
08:33It's ridiculous.
08:35The death toll has increased.
08:38This is not a crywire.
08:40The reason this could all stop tomorrow.
08:42It could all stop in December when I was on this program.
08:45All the Islamic resistance movement has to do is release the hostages that they have left and say, it's time to rebuild Gaza.
08:56Let's find someone else who can run the place.
08:58But they're not going to say that, and they're not going to give up.
09:00And they're going to continue to attack the Israeli soldiers that are there like they did last week.
09:06And they're going to get out of their tunnels, and they're still going to do that.
09:09That's what we're up against.
09:11It's not like a quagmire here.
09:13We are on the border with people who have ideologically committed to killing Israelis.
09:23They've built 250 miles of tunnels.
09:27You could probably get a tunnel from Paris to London underground with the tunnels that they have.
09:33That's what they've been doing.
09:34And that's what Israel is fighting.
09:37And that's what people understand here.
09:39Now, there are people that want to get the hostages back and say that's right now the greatest priority.
09:44But everyone agrees that the Hamas has to be finished.
09:47We can't have spent the last year and a half there so that Hamas comes out the day after, claims victory, and continues to shoot any dissidents, and especially their favorite time of the year now, June, which is Gay Pride Month, where they like to hang those homosexuals on the telephone poles or just break them, break their knees, and shoot them in the streets like they do.
10:06Hussein Ibish.
10:07Yeah, so in English, we call this whataboutism, right?
10:11It is when you excuse bad behavior.
10:15No, no, no, Mitchell, listen to me.
10:16It is when you excuse bad behavior by pointing to other people's bad behavior.
10:21No one, I think, is going to defend Hamas.
10:24Hamas is thugs and gangsters.
10:27Okay, no doubt about that.
10:28But that doesn't excuse Israel from the mass killing of Palestinians.
10:33And by the way, I agree that ordinary Israeli soldiers are not doing this on purpose, but the Haaretz report specifies Brigadier General Yehuda Vakh, commander of the IDF Division 252, as being specifically involved in the mass shooting of people coming to these aid centers.
10:52Look, Israel's behavior cannot be excused by pointing at Hamas.
10:56That's ridiculous.
10:57And Hamas could point at Israel, and does, and says, oh, look at us, we're under occupation, and we have the right to resist, and therefore we can go and shoot people in their homes and take people hostage.
11:09It's ridiculous.
11:10This kind of logic leads to endless killing and death, and it's not right.
11:15None of this justifies war crimes, murders, and mass killings on either side.
11:21No way.
11:22Enter Donald Trump, who, ahead of an Oval Office meeting next Monday, swiftly announced late on Tuesday that Benjamin Netanyahu is ready to sign on the dotted line.
11:35Trump saying there'd be a 60-day ceasefire.
11:38We'll work with all parties to end the war.
11:41By the way, he adds, I hope for the good of the Middle East that Hamas takes this deal because it will not get better.
11:46In capital letters, Negar Mordazavi, it will only get worse.
11:52Kind of sounds a little bit like the playbook with Iran when you read it like that.
11:58But in other statements that he's made, Negar, the U.S. president has said he'd come down hard on Benjamin Netanyahu, too.
12:06Does this seem like what we've seen before, or have times changed since the Israeli-Rong War?
12:12Well, it looks like what we've seen before.
12:19I want to clarify here.
12:19I think the U.S. president himself wants an end to the war.
12:24He got elected calling himself a president of peace, promising that he would bring peace to the Middle East, as well as between Russia and Ukraine.
12:31And the reason behind that is that the majority of the Americans are opposed to these wars in the Middle East and the U.S. getting bogged down with material support, arms, financials, and then potentially getting pulled into the war, like we saw with the Israel-Iran war that the U.S. had to eventually enter.
12:50So I think the intention has been there, but what I don't think the administration realized is the power of interest groups, of neocons within the president's own party, the Republican Party.
13:03And, of course, U.S.'s closest ally in the region, which is Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and how much they have sort of influenced within the administration, within the Republican Party, and against the anti-war wing of the party, which is the MAGA, the America First.
13:21So I don't know how the two are going to come this time around.
13:26The ceasefire hasn't happened.
13:27It's been a few months since the president came to the office with the promise of peace in the Middle East.
13:32He attracted Arab-American votes, Muslim-American votes that helped him potentially win in Michigan, a battleground state, and other places around the U.S. with this promise of peace, not just in Gaza, but Lebanon and in the Middle East.
13:47And that hasn't really happened, I think, because of sort of that counter push of the other side, the powerful various different within the U.S. Congress also, and, of course, the Republican Party.
14:00And so who wins this time, I'm not sure, but I think the episode with Iran maybe did sort of signal or show or warn the MAGA wing that if the war in the region, essentially in Gaza, that conflict doesn't end, it can easily spread to other regions and also potentially pull the U.S. in.
14:22There was specifically that F-bomb moment where it was touch and go for the ceasefire in Nagar.
14:30And as he was about to travel to the NATO summit, Donald Trump issued an explicative-laden warning to both Israel and Iran to cut it out.
14:40Is that emboldening him this time around?
14:43Maybe so.
14:47I mean, the way he tweeted or truth-socialed that the Israeli planes need to turn around and with the pressure came actually the turning around and an enforcement of this ceasefire with some challenge.
14:59I think maybe, maybe that would be sort of the model here.
15:03That can be potentially the model.
15:04I mean, the United States has immense power.
15:07And if they want, if the U.S. president wants to exercise that power and influence over its own ally, you know, pressure, the Israelis, there's all kinds of leverage that the U.S. has.
15:17It's just no one's ever wanted to use it to the maximum.
15:21If he wants to use that power, that influence, you know, some say the U.S. can end the war in Gaza with just one phone call to the U.S. president.
15:29So he does have that power.
15:31It's just how you see that balance of power playing out here in Washington, this also plays into domestic politics in the U.S. as well.
15:38All right.
15:38Benjamin Netanyahu, who's got to take care of his own domestic politics.
15:42He's got a coalition that includes a far right that's dead set against any kind of a truce.
15:49He sent a muscular message this Wednesday while on a visit to the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.
15:57I'm telling you, there will be no Hamas.
15:59There will be no Hamas stan.
16:01We're not going back to that.
16:03It's over.
16:04We'll release all our hostages and we will defeat Hamas.
16:06So Ronan Kohler, we on this show try to avoid too much trying to read what's inside Donald Trump's mind.
16:15But tell us a little bit about what's inside Benjamin Netanyahu's mind.
16:19Is this just staking out his turf ahead of a negotiation or do we take him at his word and that dims the prospect of an eventual ceasefire?
16:28I think that so far, all what I've heard from the different army and defense analysts is that the chief of staff himself, General El Zamir,
16:46said specifically that the army has reached the goals that they set to themselves in Gaza.
16:52So anything more than that requires changing the goals or the targets to achieve.
17:04And so in that sense, I think that even from inside the military organizations,
17:12it's very clear that if you want to do something else in Gaza,
17:17something that we haven't been doing in the last 630 days or plus more than 630 days,
17:25I don't know what that can be.
17:27So the definition, I think, in my opinion, as a citizen, as a reservist,
17:33the definition of we will defeat, the question what is defeat is the critical question.
17:39And I think that right now the question of defeating Hamas is much more kind of political and public relations
17:47and, you know, the picture of victory question rather than a real military type question.
17:56And I think that's probably going to be part of the discussion on the surface.
18:00It's like, how can they show that we won and they can show that they were not defeated and et cetera.
18:06Do you sense that with the 12-day war with Iran, that Israel was able to declare victory?
18:16Over Iran?
18:18Yes.
18:19I think so, yes.
18:21I think that over Iran, we did whatever we could.
18:26And I also want to say, I think whatever we needed to do.
18:29I don't think that anything else, unless, obviously, I'm not exposed to the very deep intelligence,
18:37but based on what I saw, what I read and what I know, we have done a phenomenal job,
18:44a job that should have been done and should have been ended at the time it was ended.
18:49Mitchell Barak, you have an Israeli prime minister who, again, has to deal with a coalition that includes the far right.
18:54They could make his coalition fall if there's a truce, unless he finds other partners with which to form a government.
19:06What are his options?
19:07Particularly, I'm seeing a report in the Times of Israel this Wednesday that, quoting Arab sources,
19:13that there could be some kind of a rekindling of a normalization of ties with Saudi Arabia should a ceasefire lead to something better.
19:22Can Benjamin Netanyahu sell a truce to his coalition?
19:30Well, first of all, he's in a different place than he was a month ago.
19:34A month ago, I don't think he was in a political position within his government to make any kind of agreement for a ceasefire
19:41that would be accepted his base and not use the opposition parties to pass it through.
19:47And that would be a problem because they threatened to leave at that point.
19:51Once he had this really decisive victory against the Islamic Republic of Iran,
19:57which many Israelis agree was a victory, both because of what Israel did alone,
20:01the extent of the damage to their nuclear program,
20:05and then, boom, President Trump sends those B-2 bombers in to finish the job.
20:10That was a fantastic military victory in Israeli eyes, as well as geopolitical, that the United States joined,
20:17even though it ended abruptly when President Trump said so.
20:21So he's got a lot of leeway now and a lot of strength and a lot of political capital based on that,
20:27that he can make a deal.
20:28And they wouldn't be that smart to bring down the government
20:31because people realize there is a greater picture to Gaza,
20:35even though they can disagree on what the goals are in Gaza right now
20:40and how much of a blow you have to give the Hamas.
20:45The point is, is they see the geopolitical picture of Iran is now destroyed,
20:49Hezbollah, the party of God, is destroyed,
20:52Hafez Assad is in Moscow somewhere,
20:55and all of these threats against Israel and Hamas have collapsed.
21:00So there's a geopolitical, what's next?
21:02And Gnau is the best person in the position to do that with President Donald Trump.
21:07Yeah, but he still has to contend with people like Ben Gavir, Smotrich.
21:14And are you saying their bark is worse than their bite?
21:18Or are you suggesting that he'll have to find other partners?
21:21Now it is.
21:23Now it is.
21:24And also, he may be able to shore up some more political support
21:27and some other political parties.
21:29We see that Gansa's party is collapsing.
21:33Two of his people are leaving.
21:35So, you know, all that is possible as far as he may even be able to bring more people in,
21:41because he was able to unite many Israelis by this decisive action against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
21:49And it really made Israel look like we are a very powerful, very powerful nation.
21:55And we, a lot of people around the world, even in your country or France, believe it or not,
22:00are probably happy that the Iranians are not achieving nuclear status.
22:06But at the end of the day, the bottom line is, it's whatever President Trump wants, President Trump gets.
22:11On January 20th, Israel stopped having independent foreign policy.
22:17Netanyahu is very close to him.
22:19They'll have a great meeting.
22:20He'll try and convince Trump whatever he's going to try and convince,
22:23whatever Trump wants to do, which is expand the Abraham Accords
22:26and make the region look more normal.
22:29And he's big into trade.
22:30And he's a transactional president.
22:32All of this stuff.
22:35And he's going to push for it.
22:36And Netanyahu is going to come back and he's going to tell the right-wing folks in his government,
22:40some of them don't make a lot of sense, that, hey, this is what President Trump wants.
22:44We've got Iran.
22:45We've done what we can with Gaza.
22:47It's time to move forward.
22:48And they're going to give him a full support.
22:50I don't see anyone leaving the government under these circumstances after the last three weeks.
22:55All right.
22:55Mitchell Barak, they're saying whatever President Trump wants, he gets.
22:58Let me ask you, Hussein Ibish, if we can just do a second of forensics here
23:02on what happened between Israel and Iran.
23:05I know that, like Ronan Koehler, you're not privy to all the military intelligence.
23:15But in that particular case, when you saw how it started, was it Netanyahu calling the
23:25shots?
23:25Was it not?
23:27In which case, is it Netanyahu, at the end of the day, dictates Donald Trump's foreign
23:32policy when it comes to the Middle East?
23:33No, I don't think either of them dictate each other's policies.
23:39I think Netanyahu, I think Trump has more leverage over Netanyahu than vice versa.
23:44But it depends how much pressure and how much political capital Trump is willing to put into
23:53pressuring Netanyahu on a given issue.
23:56He did not want Netanyahu to go to war with Iran at the moment that Netanyahu did.
24:03He was pursuing an interesting idea about Iran maybe joining a regional consortium or promising
24:09to join a regional consortium, which could have squared the circle where Iran would promise
24:16to give up the right to enrich at some future date pending the creation of some consortium that
24:22doesn't exist and may never exist, so that you could say they gave up the right to enrich.
24:28But then they could continue to enrich at a low level, 3.67 percent for energy, for electricity,
24:37and claim that they didn't give it up.
24:39And that was an interesting idea.
24:41That was the moment Israel struck.
24:43I think they were worried that that could possibly be the entree into a deal.
24:50However, Trump was interested in letting Netanyahu do what he could and see what happened.
24:56He was not passionately against it.
25:00So when he found that he couldn't talk Netanyahu out of it, he stepped back, let the Israelis
25:06see what they could do.
25:07I agree with everyone else here.
25:09It was very successful from the Israeli point of view.
25:14And at the last minute, Trump swooped in and did two things.
25:18He grabbed some of the glory.
25:20He certainly didn't complete the job.
25:22There's a lot more that the original American plan for actually destroying Iran's nuclear
25:29facilities.
25:30I mean, that would have been the first salvo of at least a couple of weeks of similar attacks.
25:35But it did do significant damage to one of their major sites, Fordo, and a couple of others.
25:42And so he managed to take some of the glory.
25:46And at the same time, he was able to stop the war.
25:48And that opens up the possibility for him to get the Iranians back to the table, which is
25:53what he really wants.
25:54Because in the end, you kind of have to convince them to voluntarily give up this quest, or eventually,
26:02some way or another, they will acquire this bomb.
26:05And I think everyone agrees they shouldn't have one.
26:08So, you know, this is where we are.
26:10We're in a situation where, yes, Trump has a lot more leverage over Netanyahu than vice versa.
26:16But it depends how much he wants to push.
26:19If Netanyahu won't listen to him, and Trump won't push very much, then Netanyahu can continue
26:26to do what he wants.
26:27My sense is on Gaza that it's going to be Hamas that's going to ultimately say no to
26:34this if anyone does.
26:36It's possible that both sides would agree.
26:39But all you'll get is 60 days.
26:42Because I think Netanyahu is very clear.
26:44This war is going to continue.
26:45He wants the war to continue.
26:47I'm not convinced Hamas wants the war to end either, frankly, at least not enough.
26:52So, you know, I'm not sure Trump is going to get his way on ending the war.
26:57He might get a respite of a couple of months.
27:00But an actual end to the war, he's going to have to put a lot more pressure on Netanyahu
27:06and sweeten the deal for Hamas in terms of ending the war and creating like a pathway to
27:14actually ending the war and getting Israeli soldiers out of Gaza, you know, which is, I think, anathema to Netanyahu.
27:22So I don't really see this as much of an opportunity for a full end here.
27:29You might get a little break like we had before in February.
27:3260 days maximum, Ronan Kuller, you agree?
27:38I don't know.
27:39I don't know.
27:40I think that the people in Israel, probably 70 to 80 percent of the people want the war in Gaza to end.
27:52The price that we are paying in lives, in our morality, in our ethics, in our economy, the reservist, the price is totally unacceptable.
28:04And I think people want that war to end.
28:08I think that the only reason Netanyahu, the only real reason Netanyahu has to continue the war is to prevent Smotrich and Benver from leaving his coalition.
28:20And I agree with Michel that if he has enough political power to show that the other option, which is a large deal, the extension of the Abraham Accords, getting the hostages back, which is probably the most important thing for most people in Israel, getting the soldiers back.
28:44I think that I think Netanyahu wants that deal.
28:48I don't know about Hamas, but I think Netanyahu wants that deal.
28:52I think Netanyahu doesn't want to have like an endless war, because if it's not if it's 60 days, it's you know, it can it can take 600 more days.
29:02What is the final outcome?
29:04So if Netanyahu wants that deal, he can probably get it.
29:10I mean, I think, in other words, if you give Hamas a pathway to ending the war and Israeli soldiers leaving at a certain date, I think they'll go for that.
29:20Without that, it's going to be very hard to get them to go for it.
29:23They want to take over Gaza again.
29:27If I can just interject, it may be better for Netanyahu, the 60 day deal.
29:33And I'll tell you why.
29:34Netanyahu doesn't want to come out right now and say the war is over, cease fire and then see Hamas claim victory.
29:40So the 60 days gives him opportunity to basically have a de facto cease fire, start letting the hostages out.
29:49Israelis will start to see some hope and feel better.
29:51And at the end of 60 days, declaring a permanent cease fire and agreement is not so hard politically.
29:58It's not a big step down.
30:00And that may be helpful to him to sell it to his base, because who knows?
30:05Netanyahu is the first guy to say, who knows what's going to happen in the next 60 days, especially if the Abraham Accords are increased.
30:12He's going to go to Washington as a hero.
30:15He's going to go to Congress as a hero.
30:18You know, he's going to shore up support everywhere.
30:20It's a totally different picture now.
30:22And he used those 60 days to kind of sell it and step down from it.
30:28In that case, you really could have an end to the war.
30:31Mitchell Barak, was there a window of opportunity where Netanyahu riding high after the 12 day cease fire could have called a snap election that's now gone?
30:41Never, ever, ever do that.
30:46Meaning I was working for Netanyahu in the early 90s from when he was a deputy foreign minister, deputy minister in the prime minister's office and chairman of the Likud.
30:55And we were there in the prime minister's office when he was a deputy minister.
30:58And Yitzhak Shamir was the prime minister.
31:01And he did fantastically well in the Gulf War.
31:04And in fact, he did well.
31:06Why?
31:06Because Israel didn't respond to the 39 Scud missiles coming in.
31:09When President Bush, the father, made a great coalition.
31:13They defeated the threat.
31:16And they had the Madrid Peace Conference.
31:18And Shamir thought, let's go to elections.
31:20And, you know, he's never been stronger.
31:22Well, robbing took over.
31:24Never give the people a chance to throw you out of office or to elect someone else if you don't have to.
31:31Just better to stay the course and work on shoring up your government.
31:35And he's good at that.
31:36He's fantastic, like we say in Israel, as finding the next friar, the next sucker.
31:42Like P.T. Barnum used to say, there's a sucker born every minute.
31:46In Israeli politics, Netanyahu looks for that sucker who's going to join his government and be totally convinced himself that he's saving the people of Israel,
31:55even though he can't stand Netanyahu, even though he thinks he should be replaced.
31:58And he may shore up more people in his government at this point.
32:00And he certainly will have support to do that among the general population.
32:04All right.
32:04Let's go back to the calculus for a second in Washington, because, Nagar Mordazavi, you mentioned the divisions within the Republican Party over how to handle the Middle East.
32:18Something of note, oil prices.
32:19They're on the rise this Wednesday after Iran's suspension of cooperation with the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.
32:28You heard Usain Ibish earlier in the conversation saying that, yeah, it's a question of just how much has been destroyed with the use of those B-2 bombers by the United States.
32:39But what is for sure is that he's reiterated that call to bring the Iranians back to the bargaining table.
32:50What's the view on that where you are?
32:55Well, I'm not sure if the attacks really, I mean, nuclear experts are now saying the attacks didn't, first of all, didn't destroy Iran's nuclear program.
33:04The fate of the uranium is unknown.
33:06It did damage the buildings, but it could potentially have set it back by months, not even years.
33:12What it did achieve is sort of a hardening of position into Iran, you know, pulling out of the, or ordering or deciding to pull out of the NPT, not collaborating with the IAEA, and essentially less international visibility into a nuclear program, which was civilian when the Israelis attacked Iran.
33:32And I also want to sort of give a big picture here.
33:36I mean, this may have been, I don't know how much of a victory we can call this, but Israel has been conducting an ethnic cleansing, a genocide in Gaza in the past year and a half.
33:47I agree with your other Israeli guests.
33:49This has, you know, moral, ethical implications, not just for the Israelis across the region, potentially around the world.
33:56Anti-Israeli sentiment because of these images coming out of Gaza is through the roof, not just in the global south, but here, even in the U.S., they have to silence students' encampments with arrests, with threatening to kick students out of the university.
34:12So I don't know how this is going to have a good impact in the short term, medium term, or long term.
34:19There was sort of a peace, a direction towards a peace or more normalization with Israel as some of its neighbors on their way.
34:27And this has unraveled all of that.
34:29It has potentially pulled Iran into conflict that can restart any moment.
34:34Nothing good comes out of it.
34:36And if we, you know, this peace through strength or using hard power in the region has been tried before, we've seen the result in Afghanistan, we've seen the result in Iraq, we've seen the result in Libya.
34:46It just brings more instability, more chaos, more insecurity to the region and potentially more armed resistance, which is not really desirable or the path towards peace.
34:58So, very briefly, and then I want to ask the following.
35:02Just because you have a picture of the White House, just because you have a picture of the White House in the background doesn't mean what you say is factual.
35:08To call again with using the term genocide.
35:10In the year 2000, there were 1.3 million Gazans, Palestinians in Gaza.
35:16In October 6, 2023, there are 2.3 million.
35:21So I don't know what genocide increases by a million people, for starters.
35:24We all agree that the number of people killed are about 55,000.
35:29No one likes to mention that in that 55,000 is between 20 or 30,000 terrorists.
35:38How many do you think there are?
35:40How many do you think there are people killed?
35:43Probably about 100,000, I would guess.
35:46About 80% of them civilians.
35:48The Gazan authorities are saying the health ministry of the Hamas Gaza system.
35:5215,000 children, at least 15,000 children.
35:55We're talking about children.
35:57We're talking about Hamas.
35:57Out of a population, it's a terrible thing, and every innocent death is a tragedy.
36:04But out of a population of 2 million people in a war, to tell me 30,000 people have been killed, it's terrible.
36:11But go look at some other statistics.
36:13I didn't tell you that.
36:13I told you 100,000.
36:15And the government of that entity, Gaza, is threatening Israel, has hostages, to attack it.
36:26So it's a terrible number, but it's really not significant in any kind of urban warfare.
36:32And you can't increase the population by a million people in 20 years.
36:36Look, I'm not interested in debating whether it's a genocide or not.
36:48The policies are genocidal, in my view, in the sense that they've targeted people en masse in a way that utterly disregards their ability to survive.
37:01Gaza has been rendered basically uninhabitable, right?
37:04And I think this is a prelude to depopulation, probably in a piecemeal manner rather than in a gigantic manner.
37:12But the point is, look, the percentage of people who have been killed in Gaza who are non-combatants is so much greater than in all the other horrible wars that are going on, including the war in Sudan, the wars in Africa, etc.
37:32It's off the charts.
37:33It really is.
37:34This is a particularly brutal war.
37:37And you can say, well, Hamas is a particularly brutal enemy.
37:40I'm not going to say a word in defense of Hamas.
37:43To hell with them.
37:44They are largely responsible for this.
37:48And they wanted this.
37:49I agree with that.
37:50But that's no excuse for what Israel has done.
37:54And what Israel has done is mass murder on a colossal scale.
37:58It's abominable.
37:59All right.
38:00The last time Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House, he had to keep up a poker face when the president announced direct talks with Iran.
38:12Nagar Mordazavi, talking earlier about this infotainment aspect of politics these days, particularly when the cameras will be rolling next Monday at the White House.
38:27Your thoughts on, again, for Donald Trump, is it all about, like he said at the end of that blow up with Volodymyr Zelensky in February, this will make great television?
38:38Or is there a plan?
38:40I think the, you know, pursuing of diplomacy with Iran and getting a better deal is really the intention of the president.
38:52He actually, I would argue, had that intention in his first term, President Trump.
38:56But he just couldn't bring the Iranians to the table.
38:59And then he unraveled the existing nuclear deal with Iran.
39:02But this time, I think he was seriously pursuing diplomacy.
39:05Well, he gave himself a very short deadline, which wasn't possible for a deal that complex, but was seriously pursuing diplomacy.
39:12And what Benjamin Netanyahu did was to essentially sabotage that diplomacy.
39:16I would argue the main goal or one of the top goals that were reached from the attack on Iran was to sabotage diplomacy.
39:23It's not a secret.
39:24Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to sabotage Washington and Tehran diplomacy since the Obama years and after that.
39:30And so I think that goal was achieved at least temporarily.
39:34And then the attack came.
39:36And I think the hope was that the U.S. would get involved and even potentially do more than just a one-time strike.
39:42But I think now, again, that MAGA win is that MAGA wing of the party is sort of having the upper hand and the anti-war voices have been pushing back.
39:54And hopefully the past will go back to diplomacy.
39:57I don't know if the Iranians are fully prepared to sort of make a deal as far as what the president, President Trump wants to put on the table.
40:06They may come back with a more hardened position this time.
40:09But they've also signaled that they're ready for negotiations if there's a serious path to diplomacy.
40:15I think, and this is what nuclear experts are saying, the path to ensuring, you know, the only way to ensuring Iran doesn't weaponize its civilian program is through diplomacy, nuclear talks, and these sort of international monitoring and safeguards.
40:31No bombing can achieve, you know, the destruction of the know-how, of the knowledge, of the science, and also the determination.
40:39There are plenty of mountains.
40:40They're going to go build it somewhere else if it's a clandestine program.
40:43And so it's important to prioritize diplomacy and to pursue it seriously and to not allow Benjamin Netanyahu to sabotage it with another set of attacks.
40:52Ron and Culler, are you optimistic, pessimistic?
40:55I'm neither.
41:00I am hopeful.
41:01I think there is enough reasons to be hopeful that things are going to change and the state of Israel is going to get back on track
41:15to become an amazing country like we have been for so many years.
41:21And the Middle East would go back on track to become a place that is advanced and modern.
41:29I'm hopeful.
41:30I think we can do it.
41:36All right.
41:36We'll have to leave it there, unfortunately, but it's nice to leave on a hopeful note.
41:40Ron and Culler, many thanks for joining us from Ribovillet in Alsace.
41:45I want to thank, as well, Mitchell Barak in Jerusalem, Hussain Ibish and Nigar Mordazavi in Washington.
41:52Thank you for being with us here in the France 24 debate.